Lessons from House Elves
by DarkIceAngelFlare
Summary: Everyone you meet can teach you a lesson, from what they do and from what they don't. This is a collection of speed ficlets about the lessons you can learn from house elves. [Keep your promises. Shared pain is easier to bear.]
1. Keep Your Promises

**Ring of Fire/King's Cup Challenge. Prompt: Grimmauld Place. Include: "No, this is Patrick."**

**Pick a Card Challenge. Nine of Spades: Write about an overlooked character.**

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><p>Grimmauld Place was a place of creeping shadows and forgotten arts. It was the home of doxies, house elves and boggarts. The house that was once proudly called the ancestral home of the Black family was now but a crumbling ruin of hubris. There was nothing pure that remained.<p>

_When had the rot set in?_ Kreacher wondered as he walked through the deserted halls. His magic, unbound to any witch or wizard after the death of his mistress, could only just keep the dust from clogging the air. "Was it the blood traitor?" he asked the portrait in front of him.

"No, this is Patrick," the man inside huffed, and Kreacher continued on.

_Sirius Orion Black had caused it all_, a part of him whispered. He remembered the years when he had been but a baby elf, when a horde of elves had filled the house. Magic had leapt like falling water from their fingertips, and the house of the Blacks was a thirsting desert. There had been children – oh, so many children – tearing through the hallways and blowing something up every third day from their accidental magic. He could remember melted cauldrons and wasted ingredients, dirty clothes that piled high in the secret rooms of the house elves and – above all – he remembered the laughter.

Those high-pitched tinkling noises that fell from the lips of sweet sweet children, and the resounding giggles that the elves would mimic to show the joy and pride they took in their work. When Kreacher had become the head elf, there had been three little sisters that visited, but it had been the two brothers who held his heart.

Fierce and powerful, they had been, and oh so mischievous. They blew through the house like a raging tornado and left destruction in every room they visited, but Kreacher hadn't minded. He had changed their diapers, calmed their tears and fed them from the moment of their birth. He could have never stopped doting on them, if it was not for that faithful day that the blood traitor had revealed his true colours and entered the house of pussies at Hogwarts.

Oh, the shame! Kreacher had burnt his fingers for weeks with the iron, wondering where he had gone wrong in looking after the boy. His mistress had wept and shouted and things had been broken, though it was not in the usual joyful smashing but one of fury and betrayal. The house elves had hated the new darkness that had crept up on them.

It had only gotten worse from then. How Kreacher wished his mistress had killed the traitor that day, the last day he had dirtied the ancestral home with his presence. Maybe then Master Regulus would still be alive. Maybe then his mistress wouldn't have died from a broken heart. Maybe then there would be younger elves running around, and Kreacher could have joined his predecessors hanging off the wall. Maybe, maybe, maybe….

Kreacher wandered through the darkened hallways and forgot. He forgot the madness of Walburga Black. He forgot the crying six-year-old heir who was always covered in the bruises of his parents' disappointment. He forgot the eleven-year-old who had pulled the house elf aside and begged him to take care of his only brother, to protect Regulus from the abuse Sirius had suffered alone for so many years. Kreacher forgot the promise that he made, and he would never realise the bitter disappointment he had been to the last living Black.

But Grimmauld Place never forgot. It locked away the memories inside its portraits and dusty artifacts, hoping that someday a Black would come and free it from the burden of rejected history.


	2. Shared Pain is Easier to Bear

**Ring of Fire/King's Cup Challenge. Prompt: the Kitchens**

**Pick a Card Challenge. Ten of spades: Write a Dobby/Winky fic (it's implied… sort of.) **

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><p>Winky missed Dobby. He was her best friend.<p>

She missed him more than her old tea cosy, more than the butterbeer she was banned from drinking, more than her master.

The kitchens in Hogwarts were lonely without Dobby. The house elves still despised her for her old drinking habits.

She wanted Dobby again. Dobby would buy her clothes, talk to her, wipe away her tears and try to make her smile. Dobby would visit late at night when she missed home the most.

Dobby was… gone.

_Deaddeaddeaddeaddeadohwhydidhedieandleaveherbehind_

Dobby had died for his 'Mister Harry Potter sir'. Dobby was the reason there was no more Darkness. So Winky built Dobby a shrine, piling all of his socks in a corner of the kitchen.

The other house elves had looked at her strangely, but no one removed it. Then one day there was a table. Another day there was a name plaque. Then came flowers, every day. Harry Potter came and left a statue("It's Dobby, Luna." "No, this is Patrick."). Then his friend Hermioninny came and left socks around the school.

Some house elves started wearing the socks. Eventually, they all did. Other students came to see the shrine, and left new socks behind.

Winky still missed Dobby. But Dobby was a hero and she was no longer alone in her pain.


End file.
